How to iterate Queue.Queue items in Python?

Question

Does anyone know a pythonic way of iterating over the elements of a Queue.Queue without removing them from the Queue. I have a producer/consumer-type program where items to be processed are passed by using a Queue.Queue, and I want to be able to print what the remaining items are. Any ideas?

Answer 1

You can loop over a copy of the underlying data store:

for elem in list(q.queue)

Eventhough this bypasses the locks for Queue objects, the list copy is an atomic operation and it should work out fine.

If you want to keep the locks, why not pull all the tasks out of the queue, make your list copy, and then put them back.

mycopy = []
while True:
     try:
         elem = q.get(block=False)
     except Empty:
         break
     else:
         mycopy.append(elem)
for elem in mycopy:
    q.put(elem)
for elem in mycopy:
    # do something with the elements